GUCCI blazer, £2,270; trousers, £890; vest, £860; shirt, £525; bow tie, £175; loafers, £640 (gucci.com)
(Picture: Ruth Ossai)
Dressed in a black Axel Arigato jacket, Acronym x Nike tracksuit bottoms and a Uniqlo hat that hides his braids, Kojey Radical strides in to a west London photo studio on a cold Sunday afternoon, shakes my hand and takes a seat opposite me. On record he can sound gravel-voiced and confi - dent, but in person this bona fide Renaissance man — he’s a Mobo-nominated rapper, poet, visual artist with a first-class degree from London College of Fashion — is quietly spoken and deliberative, emotionally open and clear-eyed about his future ambitions. ‘I have always been a servant of creativity,’ he tells me.
Ostensibly we are here to discuss his debut album, Reasons to Smile: a wonderful record that follows on from his four acclaimed EPs and is inspired by lush Seventies funk, silky R&B, grime, jazz and rap, with lyrics that reflect on the wider Black British experience while remaining intensely personal. Its original title was Cannot Be Regret, a reference to the Nigerian musician and activist Fela Kuti’s quote that ‘once a man tries his best to be honest and truthful in all his endeavours then his life is just an experience and it cannot be regret’. The quote resonated with Radical when he noticed how all the outward success he had enjoyed in his career had failed to make him happy. ‘So much was going good in my life at the time,’ he recalls. ‘I’d bought a house. I was going to be a dad. My tour had sold out. So many things were going positive but I struggled to see the positive. I had to go on a personal journey to figure out what my life was and what I was becoming.’ It was that journey he ended up charting on his most personal work yet and also a journey that led back to his past.
Radical, real name Kwadwo Adu Genfi Amponsah, grew up in a three-bedroom maisonette overlooking Hoxton Market. He lived with two sisters and an older brother all raised by their mother, a cook. ‘She worked harder than anybody I’ve ever seen work,’ he recalls. ‘If she was struggling, we’d never know. She handled her business. My mum’s a gangster. [One of the songs on his new album is called ‘Gangsta’ and it is a tribute to his mother.] She was not going to let the ship know there’s a hole in it. She’s going to plug it up and keep it sailing.’ His mother could not, however, shield him from racism. He remembers hearing his sister being called a ‘Black b****’ and feeling confused that the white driver was mentioning her skin colour. He remembers feeling nervous each time a supply teacher took a lesson at school. ‘They were about to do the register and you just knew they would mispronounce your name,’ he recalls, ‘and the other kids would want to know why you had a name like that.’
While the music his DJ brother played filtered into his bedroom — ‘I was lucky enough to experience every genre... garage, house, hip-hop, jazz’ — Kwadwo would lose himself in drawing. ‘It started from when I was four or five,’ he says. ‘I remember just sitting down. I had headphones on and a Tasmanian Devil Walkman. I used to listen to new jack swing and draw comic books and [throughout my childhood] the one constant was that I would draw: put my headphones on, get my sketchbook out and draw.’ Aged about 12 he drew the cover of a comic that featured a brand-new superhero dressed in a hoodie and jeans. He called the comic The Escapades of Kojey Radical. ‘His superpower was adaptability,’ he says. His talent for drawing did not go unnoticed. ‘Hoxton was different to what it is now,’ he says. ‘There was a lot of opportunity to get into the wrong things, but I was almost not allowed. If I tried to get involved, I was told, “No. You’ve got promise. You’ve got talent. Go to this youth club. Go to this summer class.” And I did. It kept me on the straight and narrow.’
Radical left school and ended up studying illustration at LCF. He would have loved to become a comic book artist, he says, but in his final year he saw a performance by the spoken word poet Suli Breaks. ‘We go down to the library and the place is full — it’s packed,’ he says. ‘I don’t know what’s going on. I’m sat next to my boys and he comes out and he starts speaking. And as he starts speaking, I’m listening and I realise he’s not just speaking, he’s rhyming. And he’s not just rhyming, he’s flowing. And he’s not just flowing, he’s teaching. And I’m looking around the class, everybody is transfixed.’
That moment changed his life. He transferred from illustration to music, submitting his first EP, Dear Daisy, as his final year project, gaining a first. Since then he has released a succession of EPs and singles that have often delved deep into issues of racial and societal inequality, even if he claims to have little interest in mainstream party politics. ‘Boris Johnson does not reflect me,’ he says, ‘so I don’t see myself reflected in his government.’ When I ask if there was any politician who inspired him he shakes his head. ‘Politics is not done in parliamentary offices,’ he says. ‘The real politics is in our communities, it’s the people who wake up every day and slave at their jobs to pay taxes to a government that doesn’t really care about them — that’s real politics.’ Instead of politicians he finds inspiration in figures such as Akala. ‘He should be PM: then I would be excited,’ he says, and Marcus Rashford. ‘If I was in power I would change the things that led to poverty, so we could tackle homelessness and not scream at footballers who are trying to feed hungry people.’ His lyrics may often tackle dark themes but his music videos show his lighter side: in the video for ‘Cashmere Tears’, which he co-directed, the song’s performance is paused for a comedy skit featuring Radical and his friend. ‘My music and what I represent is about serious things,’ he says, ‘but in real life I think I’m hilarious, I think I am one of the funniest people on this planet.’
Comedy is one side to Radical but he has also struggled with mental health issues that worsened after his close friend, the model Harry Uzoka, was murdered in 2018, leading him to spiral into depression. ‘I’d had traces of it before that, fleeting moments, passing thoughts or ideas, but I had Harry [for support],’ he says. ‘After he passed, I didn’t want to talk to people. Or if I did, I wanted new relationships just for the sake of having them, whether it was friendship or love. I wasn’t eating much.’ In the end, family saved him. ‘It was my sister. When you’re in that frame of mind it’s hard to see who’s really down for you and really around for the right reasons. Whatever happened, she was always there.’
Radical’s music, with jazz-inflected melodies and borrowings from Seventies funk, invites comparisons to Little Simz and Janelle Monae, while his emotionally open and politicised lyrics mine territory also explored by Dave and Stormzy. ‘Dave is basically a national treasure. What he has managed to do for UK hip-hop is unprecedented.’ What does he think makes his music distinct from his competitors’, I wonder. ‘I don’t see anyone as a competitor because the pool is so small. ‘What makes me different? I make me different; as soon as I woke up being me I was different to everyone in the world.’ Pushed a little further he acknowledges the influence of figures such as Kanye West. ‘I grew up on him so it’s hard to ignore his influence.’ And he has Kanye-esque ambitions for his future. ‘I want to write and I want to act,’ he says, adding: ‘I want to be able to design and be involved in fashion in a way that is more than just wearing the clothes, to be able to influence without compromising who I am.’ Next month, Kojey Radical will play the biggest show of his career when he performs at Brixton Academy to an audience of 5,000, and among that crowd will be his mother. He closes his eyes and tries to imagine how it will feel to be in that room with his mum watching, the woman who worked so hard to give him the chance to follow dreams that must once have seemed impossible. ‘When you come from where I come from you are told for most of your life you can’t have anything,’ he says, ‘so now I’m standing at the door of opportunity and I want everything.’
